Sunday Times 2
Never again Hiroshima, Nagasaki
World War II, in the European sector, started on September 1, 1939 with the invasion of Poland by Germany. It ended on V-E Day (May 8, 1945). The war in the Pacific (against Japan) started on December 7, 1941, with the aerial bombing of Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, by Japan. It ended with the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on August 9 that year. The death toll at Hiroshima was about 135,000 and at Nagasaki about 50,000. August 6 this year marked the 70th anniversary of that catastrophic event.
A woman reacts as she prays for the atomic bomb victims on Thursday in front of the cenotaph for the victims of the 1945 atomic bombing, at Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima. Reuters
In that year, I was a 16-year-old schoolboy just about to sit the SSC examination (the equivalent of the present day O-Level). I was an avid follower of WW 2 and its developments. I read the daily newspapers, magazines like “Illustrated London News” in libraries and watched war news in cinemas — there was a 15 minutes news-reel shown before the main film. It is of course a characteristic of old age that one tends to think frequently of the past — “the good old days” — even though lots of “bad” and “horrible” happened then. Apart from the dropping of the atom bombs, we heard of the slaughter of nearly 5 million Jews in gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps all over Germany, like Belsen, Auschwitz and Buchenwald in what is now known as the ‘Holocaust’.
Harry S. Truman, who succeeded President Franklin D. Roosevelt — on his death in March 1945 — is remembered as the US president who sanctioned the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan. He had on his desk at the White House, a wooden plaque, on which was inscribed the words: “THE BUCK STOPS HERE”. Presidents have ample sources of advice from experts, but the final decision is theirs — they can’t “pass the buck”. They cannot dilly dally in taking decisions, nor can they please everybody. The question still being asked is: “Was Truman justified in sanctioning the bombing?”
There are of course two sides to any question. In this article I have tried to show the mitigating circumstances in President Truman’s final decision, which some people think was wrong.
In his address to the nation made on August 9, 1945, President Truman said: “I have just returned from Berlin, the city from which the Germans intended to rule the world. It is a ghost city. The buildings are in ruins, its economy and its people are in ruins. . . . The German people are beginning to atone for the crimes of the gangsters whom they placed in power and whom they wholeheartedly approved and obediently followed. . . . . I realize the tragic significance of the atomic bomb. Its production and its use were not lightly undertaken by this Government. But we knew that our enemies were on the search for it. We know now how close they were to finding it. And we knew the disaster which would come to this Nation, and to all peace-loving nations, to all civilization, if they had found it first. . . . .
“We won the race of discovery against the Germans. Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbour, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans”.
So, revenge may have been one reason for dropping the atom bomb on Japan. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour by air, without any formal declaration of war, while negotiations were still going on. This is something any country is not supposed to do. Most of the US Pacific Fleet were in harbour, and hundreds of aircraft were grounded on the airfield. A total of 353 aircraft were launched from six Japanese aircraft carriers. Most of the US battle-ships and cruisers (18) and almost all the aircraft (188) were destroyed or damaged.
The attack was so sudden that aircraft crew had no time to take flight. The ships too could not leave the harbour – they were just “sitting ducks”! About 3,000 Americans were killed. Japanese losses were 29 aircraft and 64 men. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the then US president, proclaimed December 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy”. In later years President Harry Truman called it, “plain murder”. It was after this attack that the US entered the war, both in Europe and the Pacific. (A film on this attack, “Pearl Harbour”, one of the longest films ever made, a box-office draw, was shown in 2001).
Another factor that may have influenced President Truman in dropping the bomb was the psyche of the Japanese military. The Japanese code of ‘bushido’ -’the way of the warrior’-was deeply ingrained: never be captured, never break down, and never surrender. Though the code expected the soldier to live honourably in his every-day life, in war he was expected to be ruthless. Raids on ships using kamikaze (suicide) pilots were well known. Defeated Japanese leaders preferred to take their own lives in the painful samurai ritual of ‘hara kiri’ (suicide with a sword). The Japanese military had decided that in case of an Allied landing, to defend the beach-heads using suicide tactics and fight to the last. The US demanded unconditional surrender.
In July 1963, writing in response to an article in the Chicago Sun Times, about his decision, former President Harry Truman wrote to the correspondent saying: “I knew what I was doing when I stopped the war that would have killed half a million youngsters on both sides if those bombs had not been dropped. I have no regrets and, under the same circumstances, I would do it again – this letter is not confidential”. Of course, several of US Armed Forces hierarchy like General Dwight Eisenhower, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Admiral Chester Nimitz, were against the bombing, as were some in civil society. In 1946 the Federal Council of Churches in US made a statement regretting the use of the atom bomb.
What has to be remembered is that Truman not only won the war, he also won the peace. World War I ended with the Treaty of Versailles that put harsh, burdensome war reparations on Germany. These reparations payments exacerbated German economic problems, and the resulting hyperinflation ruined the chances of the governing party of the German Weimar Republic winning the confidence of the public, and allowed the rise of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler. This led to World War II. The experience of the post-World War I reparations led to the post-World War II solution, where winning powers were supposed to take reparations in the form of machines and movable goods from the defeated nations, as opposed to money.
In January 1947, US President, Harry Truman, appointed retired General George Marshall as Secretary of State. The Marshall Plan, named after him, (officially the European Recovery Programme, ERP) was the American programme to aid Europe, in which the United States gave economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II. Moreover, policies like the Marshall Plan, emphasised shared economic development of the Western European states. Instead of reducing Japan’s industrial might, the US decided it was necessary to strengthen the conquered country’s economy.
Since continued reparations payments would have the opposite effect, the US ended the programme of interim reparations in 1949. Even after suffering devastating casualties at each other’s hands during World War II, the US and Japan were able to forge a strong diplomatic alliance. The “economic miracle” of post-war Japan was due to US aid and Japan’s economic policies. So, the US and allies have maintained friendly relations with Japan and former West Germany. What happened between the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is another story which cannot be discussed in this article. Everything of course changed with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.
To sum up, the majority opinion today would be that the atom bombing was immoral. The decision was, and still is, highly controversial. One can only hope that those countries that now wield control of similar bombs, will remember the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and never use them.